Determination and perseverance may just win Jimmie Johnson the championship

by 4ever3 on Nov 14, 2009 8:31 AM EST in Bob's Articles Comment 0 comments

Chad Knaus, crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet, pushes the car into the garage after Johnson was involved in an incident on the third lap with Sam Hornish Jr., driver of the No. 77 AAA Dodge, during Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Johnson returned to the race on lap 115. Hornish went back on track, but later hit the wall to bring out the caution again, ending his day. (Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR) via www.nascarmedia.com

With eight races down and two to go in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship this week’s racing drama takes place at Phoenix International Raceway and once again you’ll find all three of NASCAR’s top racing series racing at the same track.

It was an all Busch weekend last week with the Busch brothers taking the checkers in all three of the NASCAR races at Texas.

Kyle won both the Nationwide and Camping World Truck races while brother Kurt got about 3 laps more fuel mileage than Kyle and took the checkers in the Cup race. Kyle had the field covered for most of the way and it looked like he was going to have a record setting sweep by winning in all three series in one weekend but he didn’t have enough gas to make it to the end and handed the lead over to his brother when he pulled into the pits to top up the tank.

Championship contender Mark Martin might have had enough fuel to squeak it out to the end but he and his team decided not to gamble like they did earlier in the year with unsuccessful results and came in for a ‘splash and go’ which resulted in a solid top 5 finish.

Point leader Jimmie Johnson went into Texas with what appeared to be an unreachable lead and ended up getting wrecked by a loose Sam Hornish very early in the race. Johnson’s team lead by Crew Chief Chad Knaus took the car back into the garage area to rebuild the car and get it back out onto the track to collect those valuable Championship points.

About an hour later Johnson pulled back onto the track with an ugly, but safe, car. If Johnson wasn’t in such a battle for points, or it the accident would have happened later in the race the team would have more than likely parked the car, packed up and gone home but instead they virtually put a new front end on the car (sheet metal and suspension parts) as well as a new rear-end.

Johnson would have finished in dead last if they wouldn’t have done that instead he managed to fight the war of attrition and finished 38^{th and gain 15 more points than he would have had he parked the car.}

^{How important are those 15 points? Well as it stands now Johnson is only 73 points ahead of second place Mark Martin in the standings with just two races left where anything can happen otherwise he would only be 58 points ahead.}

If Johnson wins the Championship by anything less than 15 points it will be the fact that Knaus and the crew were able to repair Johnson’s car well enough to run at NASCAR’s minimum speed at Texas and gain those extra points by finishing 38th.

This week at Phoenix we are going to see some good story lines as Kyle Busch has a chance to clinch the Nationwide Series Championship, while in the Camping World Truck Series Ron Hornaday may have the Championship all but sewn up he is still fighting for that Owner’s Championship where his truck owner’s Kevin and DeLana Harvick only have a 75 point lead over the Billy Ballew owned #51 truck driven by various drivers throughout the year including Kyle Busch.

And we can’t forget about the Sprint Cup Series as we will watch with great interest to see if Johnson can indeed hold off teammates Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon for that number one position headed into Homestead.

Oh the drama – a tired cliché I know, but fitting none-the-less.

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